• Belgian dance and performance company
• Founded in 2006 by Lisbeth Gruwez and Maarten Van Cauwenberghe
• Artistic sparring partners
• Ongoing dialogue between the physical and the auditory
• Various internationally acclaimed performances

Achieving freedom

‘Our key words are intensity, strength, precision and vulnerability. Beauty too. The dancing body is searching for freedom. We want to take all those things with us to the KMSKA. We’re looking forward to bringing dance into a museum context in the heart of the city and in that way to think differently and out-of-the-box about our work.’

Broadening horizons

‘It’s a challenge to take dance out of its institutional context, to step outside the theatre in order to reach a new audience. They might be people who are unfamiliar with dance, who find it inaccessible and hard to understand. We hope we can give them a taste of dance and can broaden their horizons through actions and interventions in the museum, at both scheduled and unexpected moments.’

Trying to be unfamiliar

‘Voetvolk is a process. Our performances are never a destination in themselves, but more of a stop along a never-ending journey. Each performance is something new. You’re unlikely to find us repeating ourselves. We let ourselves be motivated by what we don’t know. To quote the American composer John Cage, “We are trying to be unfamiliar with what we're doing”.’

Experiencing rituals

‘We look for an appropriate ritual for each performance. Something we always experience together with the whole team just before the show. We see it as a good luck charm and think it’s important for everyone to take part. Before Piano Works Debussy (2020), for instance, we re-enacted the opening of a lotus flower. While for The Sea Within (2018) we had the whole group chanting: “Kill the fuckers!” as a kind of war cry. In the case of AH/HA (2014), we did some laughter yoga to get us into a trance. And before It’s going to get worse and worse and worse, my friend (2012), we danced to a song by Bob Dylan. That eventually led to the production Lisbeth Gruwez dances Bob Dylan three years later (2015). So the next performance might well have something to do with lotus flowers [laughs].’